


Safe House For Those Who Are Full Of The Whole Testosterone Filled Civil War Bullshit

by etux



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Civil War Fix-It, Gen, Kinda, Marvel ladies being domestic and happy and casually awesome, drinking wine and eating popcorn and watching pride and prejudice and stopping superhero civil wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 05:50:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6106984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etux/pseuds/etux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes working with the Avengers and various S.H.I.E.L.D.-agents is hard, especially if you're a woman just <i>trying to keep people from doing dumb shit.</i> Luckily, the solution is to have a movie night in women-only company.</p><p>Things required: wine, popcorn, and a comfortable position.<br/>(The last one is on someone's lap if you're Natasha, and on the floor if you're Wanda.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe House For Those Who Are Full Of The Whole Testosterone Filled Civil War Bullshit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lotsofstuffandpaper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotsofstuffandpaper/gifts).



> God, I haven't written any of these ladies in _ages_. This exchange did me some good - I should show my love for these women more often.
> 
> I hope you're happy with this, lotsofstuffandpaper! All of your prompts were so good & I had hard time choosing what to write, and goshhh. Originally I meant to write something more serious and character study-ish, but then ?? life happened and I needed to write something bit silly. Cue this.
> 
> Also, you hoped for the romance to be a side plot so I kinda left it all out ?? Like there is some pairings, but only if you squint _really_ hard. Just girls being friends this time <3.

“Alright,” Pepper said as soon as she came through the front door, making Maria raise her gaze from the book she was reading. “I’m in a serious need of a vacation _right now_.”

Maria snorted at the exasperated expression on Pepper’s face, but she still had some serious empathy for the blonde: she had, after all, just returned from doing what could very well be called the most difficult task of the century.

Virginia “Pepper” Potts had just ended the conflict between superheroes that had carried the name ‘Civil War’ in media.

She hadn’t done it single-handedly or alone, of course. The task of getting Tony Stark and Steve Rogers to 

a) stop fighting,

b) realize they both had a point, and needed to compromise, and

c) apologize to each other and to the public in a televised press conference

had taken some careful planning and a lot more time than anyone would have fished. Luckily she had had a pretty great collection of women behind her - women, who had all been full of their fellow agents and heroes fighting against each other.

Maria was proud to say that she had been a part of that collection. She was also proud to say that this… _safe house,_ of kind, had been her idea: a place for all of the women who had to put up with male Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D agents to just relax with each other.

“So it’s finally done?” Maria confirmed as she watched Pepper take a wine bottle and couple of glasses out of the kitchen cabinet.

“Yeah,” Pepper sighed before turning to Maria with raised eyebrows. “You didn’t watch it?”

Maria shook her head. “I decided it was best to leave the living room to those more directly involved in the mess. I’ve been hiding here in the kitchen with my trashy romance novel and chocolate.”

“Oohh, chocolate,” Pepper said with a dreamy look on her face, and Maria chuckled before offering her a row of her chocolate slab. The blond took the chocolate looking thankful, and offered a glass of red wine to Maria in exchange for it.

Maria took the glass. “You want to hide here with me or…?”

“I think we both should face our fears and join the fun in the living room,” Pepper smiled, sipping her wine. Maria sighed.

“Okay,” she nodded, but only after taking a large gulp of wine. “Let’s check the damage.”

 

There was no damage. Not really. There was only four women looking either incredibly annoyed or incredibly bored.

“I still don’t understand why Captain Rogers had to apologize to _Stark,_ ” Wanda grumbled while laying on the floor, looking, you guessed it, incredibly annoyed. “I think it was _pretty clear_ who was wrong on this whole thing-”

“We’ve been through this million times already,” Bobbi sighs from one of the armchairs. “Neither of them was wrong _or_ right, and public apologies from both were absolutely necessary.”

Natasha, who had claimed a whole sofa for herself, nodded in agreement. “I still can’t believe you pulled it off, though,” the redhead says smiling approvingly at Pepper. “I know you hold some power over Stark, but Steve… He really sets a whole new definition for ‘stubborn’.”

Maria snorted in her wine glass, and Pepper chuckles too.

“The _thank you_ s for convincing Steve can be all addressed to Maria,” Pepper laughs, setting the wine bottle and two empty glasses on the coffee table and then motioning Natasha to move so she can sit on the sofa too.

“And Sharon!” Maria reminds, setting three more empty glasses on the table before joining Natasha and Pepper on the sofa. “Can’t forget her. I deserve only maybe like twelve percent of the credit.”

“Where _is_ Sharon?” Skye asks, not raising her gaze from her phone. She is texting rapidly.

“On a cover mission,” Bobbi answers before anyone else can. “With May.”

This gets Skye’s attention, and she raises her head to look at Bobbi. “Aw, that’s a shame. They are missing the movie night _again_.”

“Speaking of missing the movie night,” Maria says, scanning the room and only finding five women in it beside herself. “Where’s _Simmons_? I thought she was supposed be to here.”

“She’s on the balcony, calling Jane,” Skye informs her. “And I just texted Darcy - they will both join us today.”

“Jane!” Pepper says, delighted. “I haven’t seen her in ages. God, I should invite her to dinner now that the whole Civil War thing is over… Tony has a science crush on her.”

“Tony has a science crush on pretty much every person who has a doctorate and-slash-or can keep up with him in a scientific conversation,” Natasha snorts, pouring a glass of wine for herself.

No one has anything to say to that, so they all just laugh. It’s easy and comfortable, and Maria can feel the tension that has coloured the past months of her life draining from her shoulders already.

 

When Jane and Darcy arrive, they arrive with the hardest choice of the evening: what movie they will watch.

“I want a Disney marathon,” Darcy whines from the armchair she somehow shares with Skye, who is nodding eagerly.

“I’m in no way ready for a _marathon_ right now,” Bobbi mutters, and Maria finds herself nodding at that. Disney is fine, but not tonight. At least not if they’re going to have a marathon of them. One movie is more than enough for now, so she decides to tell the others as much:

“I just want to see one movie, laugh and talk with you all, drink too much wine, and then go sleep and wake up tomorrow with a nice headache so I have an excuse to not to go to work.”

Darcy and Skye both snort, and glance at each other before nodding and announcing, “Okay, the D-team is fine with that. Disney marathon will be postponed to another time.”

“God, I had forgotten you two call yourselves ‘the D-team’,” Jane says with a smile and a roll of her eyes. Darcy just sticks her tongue at her before throwing an arm around Skye's shoulders and saying, “Well, both of our names do start with D. You don’t let that kind of destiny go unawarded.”

“We are star crossed BFFs,” Skye confirms with a serious expression on her face. “Our friendship is pure and good and mostly thanks to the beautiful thing we call technology.”

“Our joint tumblr especially is a beautiful thing,” Darcy says dreamily.

“And our twitter exchanges?” Skye asks, but doesn’t wait for anyone’s answer: “Hilarious.”

“And adorable!” Darcy grins.

Silence falls in to the room, as no one can come up with an answer to the two girls. Sometimes Maria wonders if her idea of this safe house was a good idea after all, because bringing these two forces together? Sca-ry. But then she sees the way all of these women around her relax when they spend time together, and she is reassured again. When you work with dozens and dozens of male agents and heroes on daily basis, it feels nice to wind down with ladies that really _understand_ you.

“Mean Girls is the one and only choice,” Natasha finally breaks the silence, simultaneously giving up on sitting, and deciding to lay on both Pepper and Maria’s laps instead.

“I am with the Widow on this one!” Wanda calls out from the floor, and Darcy and Skye give appreciative nods as well. The others, however, sigh heavily.

“Natasha, not to shit on your favourite movie or anything, but we’ve watched that one four times already,” Maria says, fighting a smile that keeps tugging her lips upwards. “In the past _year_.”

“Four times in a year is not enough Mean Girls,” Natasha mutters, but doesn’t protest when Bobbi shrughs and says: “What about Jane Austen?”

“Oh, yes, please,” Pepper smiles at the suggestion. “Pride and Prejudice, maybe? The Keira Knightley version?”

“What else?” Bobbi asks, grinning.

And it’s settled, then. Wanda - who’s closest to the TV and the DVD player, what with the laying on the floor and all - puts the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice on, and they all settle down to a comfortable silence with their wine glasses and some popcorn.

 

Of course, no silence lasts long when these women are together in one place.

It takes only like ten minutes before Jemma and Jane are so engaged in a scientific conversation, that the others have to send them to the kitchen so they can enjoy the movie. Maria has no idea what the two scientist are possibly talking about since one of them is a bio-chemist and the other is an astrophysicist, but whatever it is, it has them both very excited.

Darcy and Skye keep live-tweeting the movie, and occasionally they disturb the quiet with a giggle or especially funny comment. No one minds though, both of them really do have great senses of humor, and their cheeriness only makes Maria smile into her wine glass.

Bobbi and Pepper keep commenting the plot and the characters’ development throughout the story, creating some interesting and intellectual conversation between them. Wanda is seeing the movie for the first time, so she just watches it intensely, nodding to herself from time to time.

Maria doesn’t have the energy to take part in the conversation, so she quietly plays with Natasha’s hair and watches both the movie and her friends. There isn’t many places she’d rather be than here right now.

 

When the movie ends, Skye claps her hands together and announces: “Next time we’re watching Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! That’s a true feminist movie, that one.”

“Oh shut up”, Jane laughs from the doorway as she and Jemma return from the kitchen. “Elizabeth Bennet needs no gun to be an icon.”

Darcy grins and gives her friend a thumbs up and a nod. “Yass!”

“In here?” Pepper asks, and raises her eyebrows when Skye and Darcy both nod. “It’s still in theatres.”

Skye and Darcy looked at each other in cheerfull puzzlement, and then turned to grin at Pepper together.

“And that’s supposed to stop us _how_ , exactly?”

Maria just rolls her eyes at that.


End file.
